Barcelona La Sagrada

I met up with Will and Russ on their Spanish adventure in Barcelona.  After a little bit of miss-direction and then good-direction from locals in Sitges, I met up with Will and Russ.  We were tired and called it a night after walking by a cool church:

And then I woke up to a beautiful Spanish sea-side town:

We decided to head to Barcelona as early as possible to see the sites. It also happened to be the Spanish Soccer Final between Barcelona and Bilboa, which meant everybody was heading to Barcelona as well.

Russell never gets a break from Grad School:

We walked to La Sagrada Catedral, the most famous of Gaudi's works.  Russell told us all kinds of interesting architecture facts along the way.  It was like one of those audio-guides, only interesting and slightly less sure of itself in terms of accuracy of information.

Unfortunately, there was a couple our wait for La Sagrada.  Fortunately, there was time for selfies and sangria.

And more informal architecture tours from Russell.  We chose to not go inside the other Gaudi buildings.

We touched statues to prove that we were really alive and doing things:

And then finally it was time to go inside!

After doing this Europe thing for several months, I can confidently say "Hey bud, I've seen my fair share of churches, and La Sagrada blows all the others out of the water"

The inside is so chaotic and beautiful. The sharp angles were interesting, but it all seemed very natural as well (which gets explained later). I took close to 100 pictures inside hoping for one that could convey how insanely cool the space was- I didn't quite get any that do it justice.

The columns look like the trees in Barcelona.

And I thought that the rainbow wall was very cool (ROYBIV?):

So cool:


I was obsessed with this one view:


This kid sums up the whole experience of being inside the church:

Alternative Caption: "Damn, these Spanish Flintstones Vitamins hit hard"

More pretty pictures:

The ceilings were translucent in certain places:

It's just so tall:

And it's weird seeing so much nature and 'unusual' things incorporated into the church:

Everywhere you look there were details:

Russell explained that he designed the arches based on ropes holding weight.  The upside down version for arches in a church is very symbolic:

The museum unter the church shows a lot of the mathematical and geometrical devices used to design certain church details:

It was just so cool:

I was happy we waited and got to go inside: